Water birth?

I had the ‘hilarious’ conversation with the wife earlier this week about the fact that she will actually have to give birth! Why it hadn’t dawned upon her prior, I don’t know. She was in the bathroom and suddenly said to me, “I’m actually going to have to give birth aren’t I?” YES!!! Of course you are. We’re not living in Hollywood where you can have an elected caesarian with included tummy tuck! So we proceeded to look at some births on YouTube. This was a mistake; for both of us. We started by looking at some water births. It was actually quite a nice video. Calm, tranquil, relaxing and intimate. Thank you babycentre for painting this picture! “That didn’t look too bad.” I said. I received a glare… We then found another water birth video. This one was the polar opposite. Loud, intense, raucous, painful and made for very uncomfortable watching. Thank you YouTube! This left us unsure about it. On one hand it sounds like a great idea that can help with pain relief to an extent. dads can really get involved by being in the pool with mum and they say that the baby is less stressed when they come out because the transition is less abrupt. They seem quite happy under the water from what I’ve seen! However, on the other traumatic hand, and my wife sums this up best, “there is nothing worse than sitting in a luke warm bath with wet hair and dirty water.” Agreed! My wife at the best of times is agitated and stressed when the bath is too cold or too hot…how on earth will she cope when she has to be in it for hours?!#!?@”# (Running a bath is a bit of a gauntlet in our house!) So where does this leave us? In the middle of a luke warm, potential pain relieving, dirty, intimate, calm, raucous, relaxing, uncomfortable, hair ruining, intense situation, that somehow we need to make a decision on.I guess it’s not a pressing issue as such, but if it might help the wife out, I certainly want to investigate it. This is quite a nice one:

Spearheaded by Al Ferguson, The Dad Network combines a personal blog with an ever-growing community of dads. Created as a personal outlet for Al Ferguson following a devastating miscarriage on his wedding day, The Dad Network has gone on to provide support to thousands of dads across the world.